AUBREY — Yellow Jersey looks like a champion as he performs in the arena.
Muscles firm and thick, a sleek tan coat, a blond mane and a tail that flows with his graceful movements as he spins, slides forward, moves backward as if he were dancing to music only he can hear.
He’s an athlete from Italy, a veteran of the World Equestrian Games, the Olympics of the equine sporting discipline, held every four years. The palomino stallion participated in 2010 with the Italian team, but he didn’t win a medal.
At this year’s games, Yellow Jersey is a champion horse whose rider, Mandy McCutcheon of Aubrey, became the first woman from the U.S. to earn a gold medal as part of a four-person reining team at the 2014 World Equestrian Games in Normandy, France.
Reining is an event that showcases the athletic ability of a horse in junior and senior categories, according to the National Reining Horse Association. In a NRHA competition, contestants must run a pattern that includes slow circles, large fast circles, flying lead changes, rollbacks over the hocks and 360-degree spins done in place as well as sliding stops, the hallmark of the reining horse. Contestants are judged on technical and stylistic elements based on the degree of difficulty.
“To represent the USA in reining and being a woman and a non-pro really adds to the fun of it,” McCutcheon said, “and just to get to do that is really heaven.”
But McCutcheon is no stranger to winning. In fact, you might say the cards were stacked in her favor. She comes from a family of horse rider champions. Her father, Tim McQuay, won a silver medal in individual reining competition and the gold in team competition at the 2006 World Equestrian Games. He’s also a NRHA Hall of Famer and a legend in the reining horse industry.
McCutcheon’s husband, Tom, won the team gold at the 2002 World Equestrian Games and an individual gold and team gold at the 2010 World Equestrian Games. He’s also a champion, winning the National Reining Breeders Classic Open Championship, two NRHA Derby Reserve championships, Tradition Open Futurity Champion, the Southwest Reining Horse Association’s Open Futurity Champion, multiple North Central Reining Horse Association Open Futurity Championships and multiple NHRA Futurity Finalists.
The couple’s 14-year-old son, Cade, has won close to $70,000 as a reining rider. He’s also the youngest person ever to make Level 4 finals in the junior category for reining, Mandy McCutcheon said.
McCutcheon has been riding horses since she was 3 years old.
“She craved it,” said her mother, Colleen McQuay, an accomplished hunter and jumper rider. “She rode as soon as she could for as long as she could.”
Mandy rode every morning and every night, perfecting her horse riding skills. She started participating in the pony hunters and jumpers when she was 5. At 9, she began her journey to become a reining champion with her horse, Califlower, and a champion teacher, her father.
“Riding in any discipline, whether it’s Western or English, is about communicating the cues to get the horse to do what you want it to do,” Colleen McQuay said. “So reining is really like getting the horse to be a gymnast and perform individual maneuvers.”
Mandy and Tom McCutcheon have made it their life’s work to breed, train and rehabilitate reining horses at their 150-acre horse ranch in Aubrey.
Tom McCutcheon grew up training horses on his father’s ranch in Wisconsin, where he had to turn horses into something useful — a barrel racer, a cutting horse or a reining horse. He met his wife on the horse show circuit.
“We grew up in it,” he said.
“I don’t really remember meeting him,” Mandy McCutcheon said. “We grew up together at the horse shows.”
They married in 1999 and moved to Texas in 2007, because the weather here is better for horse breeders. In January, it’s too cold up north for foals.
“It’s perfect for what we do,” she said. “It enables us to get more mares bred, have more babies and keep more mare owners happy.”
They partnered with Roxanne Koepsell to build the McCutcheon Reining Horse Ranch in Aubrey, installing 140 stalls and hiring 22 people to help run the business.
“It’s not hard to find horse people,” Mandy McCutcheon said, “but it’s hard to find good people who are dedicated to it.”
They also hired Duane Latimer, a Canadian World Equestrian champion whose winnings total $2 million, to help train horses.
“To have two trainers like Tom and Duane at one facility is not very common,” McCutcheon said.
She and her husband have five trainers working with 80 horses, and they breed more than 300 mares a year. Five of the top reining stallions in the industry are at the heart of their breeding program: Gunners Special Nite, Ruf Hearted Jac, Smart Luck, A Sparkling Vintage and Electric Code.
The McCutcheons also recently started a website, VirtualHorseHelp.com, to educate the public about what happens behind the scenes of the performance horse industry.
The U.S. leads the way in the sport of reining, Mandy McCutcheon said, but many European countries are “catching up and making us work for it.” Other countries buy horses, sometimes the best ones, from the U.S. and take them home to start their own breeding programs. Their riding trainers also spend time in the U.S. to perfect what they know of the reining discipline.
McCutcheon’s father picked up Yellow Jersey in 2013 after riding him at the 2013 Kentucky Reining Cup. “The biggest thing that sold me on him was riding him,” Tim McQuay wrote on his website. “He’s so great minded and easy to be around. There’s not a maneuver that is hard for him to do. He is so talented and comfortable to ride. I think that will pass on.”
“He was really quite trained,” Mandy McCutcheon said. “So my biggest goal for him was to keep him really fit, get him in good condition, so the [plane] trip overseas wasn’t too hard on him.”
Keeping him healthy and fit worked. At this year’s competition, which ended on Sept. 7, McCutcheon won the individual bronze medal and team gold medal for the U.S. She earned $2 million in winnings.
The reining season isn’t over, though. It lasts all year long. She and her husband participate in reining competitions at least once a month. They recently flew to Las Vegas to compete in the High Roller Reining Classic, which has a purse prize of more than $500,000. When they return, they’ll be heading to Katy for a horse show.
“It’s an addiction,” McCutcheon said. “It’s an adrenaline rush.”
CHRISTIAN McPHATE can be reached at 940-566-6878 and on Twitter at @writerontheedge.
